Kappa

Download Enchanting and sometimes terrifying—a certain restrained sorrow, a certain preference for the visual, a certain lightness of touch, seem to me essentially Japanese. Extravagance and horror are in his work, but never in his style, which is always crystal clear. Perhaps he was inspired by Swift’s Yahoos [but] halfway through the story, Akutagawa forgets the satiric conventions: it hardly matters to him that the Kappa, who are water imps, turn into humans who talk Marx, Darwin, or Nietzsche.

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